Sometimes, even the most dutiful soldiers dream of the impossible

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“Sometimes I think we should just.” Mina took a long drink. “Just hop in your car and leave it all behind.”

“Blaze away like outlaws?” Haruka laughed, and wasn’t quite drunk enough not to feel the strain on her bruised ribs.
Mina sloshed her drink around her bottle in a circle. She had a way of making beer look glamorous, if sometimes also tragic.

“You know who I was before all this? Who I could have been? Could still be if we just–” she gestured widely into the ether. “Don’t we deserve our lives? Our happiness?”

Haruka took a deep drink. “Let’s do it. Jet off at first light, not tell a soul.”

“You’ll do freelance mechanic work at truck stops to keep us going.”

“You’ll pickpocket the truckers and I’ll pretend not to notice where our money really comes from.”

Mina laughed, big and wild. “You’ve gotten too smart. This whole thing is ruining you.”

“We’ll have time to undo it. A simple life will make me simple.”

“We’ll never do any of this,” she indicated their bandages, “again. We’ll never fight, except for your stupid ego, we’ll never deal with damn premonitions of doom. Our future will be ours to make.” She hiccuped. “We won’t have duty, or destiny, or– or /her/.” Mina shook, but not from hiccups. “We won’t have a princess, we won’t have to protect her.” The tears started, big gobby tears that ate their way down her checks. “We won’t have stupid beautiful Usagi, or Rei breathing down our necks, or Mako throwing herself in dangers way, or, or, or any of it.” She wrapped her arms around herself. Haruka pulled her head onto her shoulder and let the tears soak through her shirt. “We’ll be free,” Mina sobbed. “All we have to do is leave.”

“We’ll be free,” Haruka whispered as gentle as she could this tipsy. “We’ll leave in the morning. First thing.”

She rubbed Mina’s back as she cried, offering empty promises until they both fell asleep on the couch.